Athletes bid to qualify for the African Games set for March
Story by Lawrence Trusida, Sports Editor
ZIMBABWEAN short-distance runners are putting in the work to try and qualify for the African Games which will be held in Ghana this March.
The 13th edition of the African Games will be held in Ghana from the 8th to the 23rd of March.
Accra will be the Games’ village, but this will be the second time in history that the games will be decentralised to other cities, with other sporting disciplines to be held in Kumasi and Cape Coast.
Zimbabwe is hoping to send a big delegation in athletics and to achieve that athletes have been preparing since September last year.
The coach, Mr Mavhuto Tumba said, “ I am very much optimistic that we will have a big number of athletes who qualify for this event, we have been preparing since September we did not even break for Christmas as we want to put in the yards to make sure that we are ready for the qualification windows that are coming up.”
Due to the lack of an electronic timing system in Zimbabwe, the athletes are preparing to go and compete in Botswana and Zambia to try and qualify for the Games since only electronic time is recognised by the World Athletics.
Already, two locally based athletes have qualified for the continent’s biggest games with Dickson Kamungeremu set to compete in the 100m event while Gerren Muwishi will compete in the 400m races.
“Since this is the second senior competition I am targeting to do better, I have been preparing very much for that Games and I am targeting to get into the final, that was what I am looking at and focused on right now,” said the sprinter, Gerren Muwishi.
Foreign-based stars like Tapiwa Makarawu have already sealed qualification for the Accra Games.
Former sprinter, Itayi Vambe is also helping out the athletes at the National Sports Stadium’s B Arena together with other local coaches.
He said, “For the country to succeed we need a collective effort, it’s all hands on deck, we have been preparing and we want to try and follow the International standards in preparing our athletes and see if we cannot succeed at the Games.”
Zimbabwe has never won a gold medal in athletics at the African Games, with their best performance earning them a silver medal in the 400m hurdles won by Ken Harnden when the country hosted the 1995 games, while Talkmore Nyongani also bagged a silver in the conventional 400m at the 2007 games held in Algeria.
In the ladies category, the best has also been a silver won by Julia Sakala in the 1500m race at the 1995 games in Harare.
